A bezel is, among other things, a thing that goes around the screen in an arcade cabinet so you can't see past it or behind it. I got a piece of black poster board (called Bristol Board in Canada and England, but not in America) spattered it with white paint for "stars", and double sided taped it to the TV with a square part in the middle cut out so the screen would be visible, and a tiny square so the remote control for the TV would still work. It makes a huge difference. I also got a Pole Position steering wheel from eBay this week. It's about 3/4 the size of your average car steering wheel, and has the Atari logo on it. Now I have to figure how to hook it up.
This week I started teaching short fiction, and used videotaped TV shows to illustrate story structure. One class got "That 70's Show" and the other got "The Dukes of Hazzard" to do this with. The kids are grateful to have this stuff of the real world enter the sterile fastness of their high school. I'm also photocopying short stories I feel like teaching, to mix in with the milksop, moralistic pap that much of the textbook stuff seems to be. As the textbook has that sort of stuff, I'm going to throw in some pulp fiction short stories, for instance, the first "Conan the Barbarian" story. My only concern is that the ornate, faux-ancient language will be too hard for some students.
"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars -- Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."
Saturday, 25 September 2004
Bezels and Barbarians
A bezel is, among other things, a thing that goes around the screen in an arcade cabinet so you can't see past it or behind it. I got a piece of black poster board (called Bristol Board in Canada and England, but not in America) spattered it with white paint for "stars", and double sided taped it to the TV with a square part in the middle cut out so the screen would be visible, and a tiny square so the remote control for the TV would still work. It makes a huge difference. I also got a Pole Position steering wheel from eBay this week. It's about 3/4 the size of your average car steering wheel, and has the Atari logo on it. Now I have to figure how to hook it up.
This week I started teaching short fiction, and used videotaped TV shows to illustrate story structure. One class got "That 70's Show" and the other got "The Dukes of Hazzard" to do this with. The kids are grateful to have this stuff of the real world enter the sterile fastness of their high school. I'm also photocopying short stories I feel like teaching, to mix in with the milksop, moralistic pap that much of the textbook stuff seems to be. As the textbook has that sort of stuff, I'm going to throw in some pulp fiction short stories, for instance, the first "Conan the Barbarian" story. My only concern is that the ornate, faux-ancient language will be too hard for some students.
"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars -- Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."
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